


fahr weiterhin klapprad

by ascience



Category: Football RPF, Men's Football RPF, Music RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: 5+1 Things, German National Team, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 07:02:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13118541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ascience/pseuds/ascience
Summary: Sami takes dating advice from Cro. Of all people. (5 times Cro meddles and one time it works out.)





	fahr weiterhin klapprad

**Author's Note:**

> If you clicked on this in morbid fascination, hello! You’ll get exactly what it says on the tin.  
> If you’re one of the five enabler friends who made this happen, then thanks for finally getting this idea out of my head, after about a year of incubation time.  
> If you want more info, there are a couple of links after the fic. [This is Cro.](http://media1.faz.net/ppmedia/aktuell/gesellschaft/3841064876/1.2967161/default/cro-das-genie-seinen-musikstil.jpg)

**1**

Sami doesn’t know most of the people at this jam session, which is not unusual. He was only dragged into this via Cro anyway, so it’s no wonder he’s a bit of the odd one out between the high hipster twenty-somethings.

There’s someone sitting in the corner, hunched over a laptop on his skinny crossed legs, mixing beats or whatever you call it these days, while a couple of gangly white guys pass around a microphone and take turns lazily talking about the girl they want to sleep with and pretend it’s rap.

Sami was pretty sure he was having a good time chatting with a heavily tattoed guy about Juventus and the Champions League, until Cro gets up from the makeshift bar and unashamedly pushes the guy away to make space for himself to slouch on the chair next to Sami.

“Hey Sami, we haven’t talked much yet,” Cro says and claps him on the shoulder. “What’s sporty and can’t stop frowning?”

“Is that supposed to be a riddle?” Sami squints. You never really have a choice where conversations go with Cro.

“Yes,” Cro waves encouragingly for Sami to try and guess. He draws out the word in that slow voice that makes him sounds like he’s always high, which, granted, he probably always is.

“Sporty and… no idea.”

“It’s you,” Cro says and shoots finger guns at Sami.

“Haha. Ha. I’m not frowning.”

“Sorry, you totally are. The whole time you were talking to him, you were like,” Cro says and mimes what Sami was like in his eyes. He pulls the corners of his mouth down and does ridiculous baby whining voices.

“What? I’m fine, I’m having fun.”

“Seriously, dude, I really can’t use that long face in my presence. It’s upsetting the vibes and I can’t have that at my parties. Image to uphold and everything.”

“I’m as happy as on any other day,” Sami says, amused. “We were just talking about football.”

“Ah! I see.”

Somehow, without any idea why, Sami feels caught. “See what?”

“Football,” Cro replies, nodding sagely.

“So?”

“I know they’re all singing love songs and everything,” Cro says and points at the corner with the laptop boy and the rappers, “but come on. I thought you were over the lovesickness by now.”

“I wasn’t--”

“Whenever we meet, all you ever say is Mesut here and Mesut there and this reminds me of Mesut and Mesut would like this. You gotta, like, face it.”

“I literally didn’t even--”

“I invited you to have fun and you still talk football and pine.” Cro blows a raspberry. “Boooring.”

“I don’t talk about him that much,” Sami objects weakly.

“When you arrived here, the first thing you said was, ‘I should get one of those for Mesut.’ It’s a cardboard folding stool I got for two euros. I don’t think Mesut gives shit.”

So maybe Cro has a point.

It’s not like Sami never stops talking about Mesut, but he does think about him quite a lot. Especially now that they haven’t been in touch much lately, with both of them wrangling with injuries here and there. Here and there, Italy and England and rehab somewhere in between.

Sometimes Sami is embarrassed by all the texts he writes and doesn’t send, by the photos he takes with the intention to show Mesut and never lets anyone see.

He loves Mesut a lot, it’s just difficult to put into direct words and actions.

“Look, you’re a good friend, so dating advice is on the house,” Cro says generously, sprawling his arms over the back of the chair and ignoring that Sami never ever asked for this. “You need an expert to help you.”

“Like who?”

“Me. Duh.”

Sami squints skeptically. “You. You can’t even name the club Mesut plays for.”

“Eh, it’s in England, it’s red, why should I care. I don’t need to understand your sport, I need to understand your souls.”

“Dude,” Sami says. “Are you high?”

“I’m offended!” Cro says and dramatically waves his hand. “I mean, yes, but I got major dating game.”

“You call women ‘pearls’.”

“Maybe Mesut would be into that.”

Sami facepalms, mostly so he doesn’t have to see Cro’s suggestive face which he somehow even manages to convey through his mask.

“Really, uh, thanks, but I don’t think you can help.”

“It can’t get worse, can it?” Cro asks.

Perhaps it says a lot that this is what convinces Sami. He sighs and leans back in his chair.

“Whatever, do you worst.” As Cro’s grin grows wide below the edge of his mask and his eyes beam, Sami is quick to add, “Nothing wild, okay? Nothing the journos can twist around.”

“You’re in the hands of a professional.”

“And what exactly are you planning so professionally?”

Cro gives Sami a judging once-over, which is high coming from someone who is wearing a crumpled panda mask and a sweater that says _SW#G_.

“Well, whew,” Cro says and scratches his fur ears. “Where do you want me to start?”

“Shut up.”

“Okay. Hair cut.”

Sami automatically reaches to touch his hair, when Cro’s reply comes that quickly and one-wordedly. “Wait, what?”

“Not to be an asshole,” Cro says with all the intention to be an asshole, “but that hair cut was hot in the 90s maybe. Shave the sides, son.”

“You did not just call me son, son.”

“I think it looks quite good,” one of Cro’s friends, bowtie and shirt with melon pattern, steps in.

“Never talk to me or my son ever again,” Cro says with a raised index finger. The friend shrugs and retreats, as this doesn’t appear to be an opinion that Cro will budge from. It’s still Sami’s decision though.

“I’m not going to cut my hair!” Sami says firmly and shakes his head.

\---

“So you cut your hair,” Mesut says.

Sami draws his fingers through his hair and tousels what’s left of it. He had just fit in the appointment with the hairdresser before the international break, so he’s not yet used to the feeling of the shorter strands.

Basically everybody on the team has commented on it by now, and his head suddenly seemed to be some sort of unlikely magnet, because every other person also tried to touch it. Sami managed to dodge almost all attempts, except for when Manu and Boa used their height to their advantage.

Only Mesut had not said anything so far, at least until now.

“Huh?” Sami asks and acts like the haircut wasn’t the one thing on his mind for the past days. “Oh, right. Yeah. New hair cut.”

“Nice,” Mesut hums, before he turns back to his phone.

“Do you like it?”

Mesut looks up again. “Yeah, sure. It suits you.”

He doesn’t swoon and fall into Sami’s arms and he doesn’t passionately kiss Sami either. That’s a little disappointing, but at least Sami doesn’t have to tell Cro that it worked.

“I’m still not really sure about it, to be honest. I keep reaching to brush strands away when I don’t need to.”

“It looks great. Trust me,” Mesut says sincerely, holding Sami’s gaze, before breaking into a grin. “It’s gonna get you all the Italian girls.”

For the record, Sami does manage a smile in response to that. “Right. Yeah. The girls.”

 

**2**

“First of all, the plan was flawless,” Cro says, “your execution must have been the problem.”

“How on Earth am I supposed to _execute_ a haircut?” Sami almost yells into the phone, and there’s a sulky pause before Cro answers.

“Well, better than you did, apparently!”

That must have been the problem, Sami thinks, because anything else would just mean admitting that Mesut likes him, likes him as a friend, but no amount of make-overs are going to add that little bit more Sami is hoping for.

He sighs and looks down the hallway to where Toni and Thomas are carrying their minigolf clubs outside. “I mean it’s like, whatever. We’re gonna meet for table tennis this evening, it’s going to be nice.”

“No, Sami, we are far from done,” Cro says. “This is a multiple step programme, and frankly I am disappointed by your low performer attitude.”

“Okay. What else do I need for Mesut to fall in love with me?”

“We improved your hair, we can’t really do much about your face--”

“ _You’re_ the one who never takes off his mask,” Sami points out, but then again, Cro is not the one with a crush on his friend either.

“-- so now we have to talk about your clothes,” Cro continues.

Sami looks down at himself. He’s wearing the assigned team clothes, a grey adidas shirt and black tracksuit pants. With little variation, it’s what all of them are wearing, including Mesut, because they kind of don’t have a choice.

“And what exactly do you suggest?” Sami asks. “I’m not going to wear your baggy sweaters with half-naked women on them. Or anything that says Supreme on it.”

“I don’t know, man.” Cro hums. “Like, suits are a thing, right?”

The overdue suspicion creeps up on Sami that Cro is more or less making this all up on the spot. “I’ve worn suits before. Plenty, actually.”

“But not with this hair cut!” Cro says. “The steps build upon each other. It’s like Maslow’s hierarchy.”

“Who’s what?”

“I don’t know, but it sounds smart. I came across it stoned on Wikipedia once. It’s like three clicks from the cloud rap article, it turns out.”

Sami stiffles his laughter with his hand. Cro’s ridiculous, but the sight of Sami chilling in a hotel hallway laughing into his phone is probably just as funny.

“Anyway, don’t distract Date Doctor Cro. Suits. Hasn’t Mesut ever complimented you when you cleaned up?”

“I mean, maybe,” Sami replies. Mesut has told him before that he looked good when he dressed up for a party or something, but not, like, sexily. At the last fitting for Hugo Boss with the national team Mesut was in the room the whole time when they had taken Sami’s measurements, but he hadn’t said anything and just watched. “I guess. I don’t--”

“Aha!” Cro interupts triumphantly, like he’s making Sami see the obvious. “So wear a suit, send him pics, watch him drool, wait for the heart eye emoji and then send the dick pic.”

“Uhm.”

“Sorry, typo. I meant to say, send a kiss back.”

Sami doesn’t point out that they’re talking and not texting, and he just says, “I hope you don’t mind if I ask my teammates for suit advice instead of you?”

If Sami interprets the sound correctly, Cro breathes out in relief.

“Yes, do that. And don’t call back until you’ve at least kissed him.”

Sami can’t really believe he’s still actually following Cro’s advice, but then again, he’s got nothing to lose.

He texts Claudio after the evening training session, and it’s kind of awkward, especially through half-broken Italian. Claudio seems extremely delighted though and sends a pdf with photographs and cuts as well as the address of his tailor right away.

Mesut wants to shower before they go to play table tennis, so Sami uses the time he waits to sit on his bed and scroll through the photos on his phone. He doesn’t even notice when Mesut walks up to him and looks over his shoulder.

“Oh,” Mesut says, just a small and surprised sound.

Sami coughs and quickly puts his phone on his bed screen-down. “You ready to head down?” he asks and tries to ignore how Mesut’s white shirt clings damply to his chest.

“What are you looking at suits for?”

Sami almost panics, like it’s illegal to look at pictures of clothes or something. “Oh, you know,” he says. “One needs suits sometimes.”

“You’re not getting married without telling me,” Mesut says and tilts his head as he squints suspiciously at Sami.

“What? No! I’m not getting married. Why would you even think that?”

“I don’t know,” Mesut says and laughs nervously. “Are you seriously just looking at suits for fun?”

Now this was not really how Cro had sketched out this plan. Sami is pretty sure even that Mesut thinking he’s getting married (To whom? There had been nobody, real or fake, since Lena.) is more than counterproductive.

“Yeah, why not?”

“Just felt like you’ve been brooding over something. In training-- this is stupid,” Mesut interrupts himself in the middle of the sentence. He puts one knee on the cover of the bed that Sami is sitting on and leans on it.

“Tell me.”

“Our one-two pass exercise in training must have been the worst out of the whole bunch. I’m being a friend when I say that was mostly your fault.” Mesut scrunches up his face and Sami wants kiss the unhappy look off it. “I figured it was about something more than just… fashion.”

 _Yes, about you_ , Sami thinks and doesn’t say.

“I’m not getting married, Mesut,” he repeats instead. “It’s just a suit.”

Of course, it’s not just a suit. Sami thinks maybe Mesut can feel that, because he still doesn’t look entirely convinced, even though he probably never believed the marriage thing either. But in the end, Mesut nods and pushes himself away from the bed.

“Sorry,” Mesut says, grimaces as if in disbelief over himself. “I guess I’m a little on edge, too, end of season and all. Ignore it.”

“Too on edge to get your ass handed to you in table tennis?”

Mesut swats at Sami and snorts. “Excuse me, we’re playing doubles and we’re on the same team. If anything, we’re both going to get our ass handed to us.”

Sami pockets his phone, and they walk down to the gym in the basement of the hotel.

Like a late afterthought when they’re on the stairs, Mesut says, “I wasn’t like, judging, you know. You look good in suits.”

Sami almost misses a step. “You think so?”

“Like you don’t know! I tell you this all time.”

Sami is pretty sure he’d remember if Mesut did indeed, but he’ll gladly take it.

When Sami does eventually take a photo of himself in a suit (or well, forces Paulo to take it) and sends it to Mesut, he receives a heart eye emoji as predicted, but it’s followed by about twenty laughing-crying ones.

Mesut also puts the photo on his snapchat with the same emojis and wonky red hand-drawn words that are probably supposed to read ‘marriage material’.

To be honest, though, that only confuses Sami further. He wants to read it as flirting, but then again that’s probably wishful thinking.

 

**3**

“You should probably admit that you’re not better at this than I am,” Sami says at the computer screen between bites of his lunch.

“No, no, no, this is _good_ ,” Cro stresses as he waves his hands around in the video call window. “My view is clear now, my vision obvious. We know what you should work on!”

“Which is?” Sami asks, despite knowing he shouldn’t take the bait.

“Social media! It’s the way to show him you’re serious enough about it to put it on the Internet where nothing can ever truly get deleted. It’s like a vow for eternity.”

“Dude, no. I told you, nothing that gets to the journos.”

“Tsk. You know me, I’m the king of subtle,” Cro replies (as a man who walk around in a panda mask) and is already scrolling around on his phone to check out God knows what. “Plus, it’s easier than the suit. You don’t even need to leave your chair for this.”

Sami turns the fork around in his bowl of noodles. “You have about twenty minutes until I need to leave,” he says, and Cro grins.

“First of all, go to Mesut’s insta page,” Cro instructs.

Sami almost opens his mouth to ask why, but then he just gets out his phone and does as told. “Okay.”

“Good. Now put a like on the first post.”

“I already liked it the other day.”

“Then put a like on the second one.”

Sami taps the screen, likes it and expectantly looks at Cro.

“And now the third one,” Cro says, and Sami does that, too. “And the fourth, the fifth, you catch my drift. Just the whole page down.”

Sami raises his eyebrows, but Cro impatiently gestures for him to continue, so he taps his way through the feed, although he has no idea what this is really supposed to accomplish.

“I’m at March now, is that enough?” Sami asks and Cro benevolently agrees.

“Now the next strike. Make a new post, just pick any photo of Mesut and you. I know you have like trillion of those.”

“I have a completely ordinary amount of--”

“Shhh. Pick a photo, then we write a caption. Well, I’m the lyrical genius so I will write it for you.”

Sami pushes his noodle bowl away, put his phone on the table and carefully chooses a photo that’s okay for posting on a random day like this. It’s a selfie that shows half of Sami’s amused face and in the background there’s Mesut sitting on a lounger in the backyard of his house, looking at his phone in concentration.

Sami stares at the photo for a moment, the needy thoughts flaring up as they do sometimes, then he looks up at Cro again. “I picked one.”

Cro is focused on his own phone and hums absent-mindedly. “Okay, so tag him, then--”

“Don’t you want to see which photo it’s gonna be?”

“I don’t care,” Cro says and snorts. “I already have the perfect caption in mind. The rest is. I don’t know. Decoration.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Right. So tag him, then two emojis. Hm. A football one, I guess? And the guy raising his hand. Oh and an avocado of course. Then type ‘missing my pal’.”

Only about half of it makes sense to Sami, but he obediently types what Cro says.

“And then, like,” Cro crosses two fingers of each hand to mime a hashtag sign. “Hashtag see you soon. Too desperate?”

“I _am_ desperate,” Sami replies, grimacing. “I’m still taking _your_ advice.”

“Then post.”

Sami frowns. “That’s it?”

“Well, now Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Pinterest, Tumblr, Periscope,” Cro counts along on his fingers. “Is StudiVZ still a thing?”

Sami is spared from having to answer as his phone rings. Mesut. Sami’s heart skips for second, but of course Mesut has no way of knowing what he’s discussing with Cro and it’s even too fast to be about the instagram post.

“Hey, what’s up?” Sami asks, after taking the call. He mouths ‘Mesut’ at Cro, who immediately perks up and makes an immature jerk-off motion at the camera while moving his tongue in and out of his cheek.

Sami rolls his eyes.

“Hey, Sami,” Mesut says, “uhm, just wanted to tell you that I think your account’s been hacked?” On the other end of the line, Mesut makes a rustling noise, then he continues. “There’s been likes from your account on my _all_ posts way back to like, a year ago.”

“Oh yeah, that’s-- I’m aware.”

“Right. I just figured I should tell you in case you didn’t know yet. Before the hacker posts offensive memes or something.”

“No, there’s no hacker. I liked the posts.”

There’s silence for a second, then Mesut laughs. “You liked a hundred of my instagram posts?”

“Yes.” There’s really no good way to phrase this, and Sami flips Cro (who, by the way, is still leering) off and silently ends the video call.

“Thanks. I guess?” Mesut says. “You mean you look at my posts?”

Sami only just holds back the pained whining. “Yeah, sure,” he says as nonchalantly as he can. “They’re good posts. I wanna support you.”

“And it totally wasn’t an accident like when you look up a hot person on facebook and accidentally like one of his photos when you’ve scrolled back to 2013?”

“What, no,” Sami splutters. Then, “His photos?”

“What?”

“You said ‘his photos’."

“His? Their. I’m pretty sure I said their. Mine. My photos. You were liking my photos.” Mesut gets that stubborn sound in his voice, that Sami likes and that Mesut doesn’t like when Sami says he likes it.

“And it’s somehow rocking your world?” Sami asks.

“Haha. Funny. I wanted to help you and now I’m being ridiculed. Keep liking my posts, Sami.”

“Will do.”

“See you soon,” Mesut says before he ends the call, and maybe Sami feels a little lightheaded.

 

**4**

“He totally made the connection,” Cro says. “The pronoun slip is like solid evidence. We have a case against him now.”

“That’s totally not what I’m trying to do,” Sami says and sighs. “But go on.”

“All we need to do now is bring it home when you go to visit him anyway. Close the case.”

“Stop the court metaphors. I hope your next idea is not to get us both arrested just so we get some quality time together in prison.”

Cro coughs, but Sami knows he’s just playing it.

“Whatever,” Sami says, puts Cro on speakerphone and sets the phone down on the table. He starts doing routines with a football, just keepie-uppies, nothing too wild on a free day and next to the breakable interior of his apartment. “Hit me. How bad can your next idea be?”

“It’s easy,” Cro replies. “Just talk to him honestly.”

“What.” Sami has a hard time to catch the ball before it could hit the window glass, as Cro starts laughing hysterically.

“No, I’m joking of course. I’d never say that.”

Sami had talked to Mesut between last time and now, and it had pretty much been like always, Mesut going on about Balboa and Wenger and English food. However, there had also been moments of silence that Sami was sure hadn’t been there before, and Sami had wanted to yell _I’m sorry for the hundred likes_ and _I love you_ , but he didn’t do it because he wanted Mesut to yell it. Relationship stuff was so bewildering.

“At least pretend like you’re listening to me,” Cro interrupts Sami’s thoughts.

“How would you even know I’m not listening?”

“Because I’m psychic and I know you’re bawling your eyes out over your BFF. Now shut up. What’s next is the GRG.”

“The--”

“The Grand Romantic Gesture.”

“Maybe we should start planning your SSD.”

“Sami.”

“Your sad sudden demise. Anyway, I have invited him to the cinema, you know,” Sami objects, mostly out of principle.

“Oh yes, bro, tell me more, what did you watch? Wolf of Wall Street? Did you yawn and put your arm around him?” Cro makes exaggerated snoring noises. Sami would rather die than tell him that he _did_ do the arm move. “I’m thinking bigger. And more obvious. Do you know that scene from that one movie where the dude holds up the boombox?”

Sami turns the football in his hands, lets his fingers run over the seams. “Yes,” he says, despite Cro’s very meager description.

“Awesome! Yeah! So. Do that.”

“That’s it? ‘Do that’? Care to elaborate at all?”

“Uh, I gotta go,” Cro says quickly, “Meet and Greet and then interviews, you know the biz. Arrivederci, son.”

“Wait, Cro,” Sami says, drops the football and picks up the phone from the table as if that would hold back Cro, too. “Are you telling me to do this because you think it will work or because you want free promo for your music?”

“Yes. And now go, love doesn’t wait. Or something.”

“Or something,” Sami repeats to himself after Cro has ended the call.

When he’s standing in front of Mesut’s house a couple of days later with a boombox he got off ebay, Sami’s done a pretty good job at convincing himself that this was his own idea.

The surprise is ruined a little bit by the fact that Mesut himself had to let Sami in through the front gate, but Sami is still pretty sure that Mesut isn’t expecting _this_.

Sami hesistates for a second before propping up the box and turning the music on, because what the literal fuck is he doing and at whose fucking advice? But there’s really no turning back after the first couple of bars of the Cro song hit the English air.

At first nothing happens, which is probably obvious, because Mesut is inside the house somewhere, waiting for Sami to enter.

For some reason, Sami expects Mesut to look out of the window upon hearing the music, so he could look up at him all Romeo-and-Juliet style, but of course Mesut doesn’t stick to the script.

Instead, he comes hurrying out of the front door, pretty much running up to Sami. He’s doubling over laughing all the way and still doing it when he falls against Sami and hugs him.

“Sami, what,” Mesut says, barely getting a word out over the laughter. Sami had been more looking at the romantic, not the ridiculous side of this, but the love in the air seems to have flown straight past Mesut. A motive that gets repetitive after some time.

“Hi,” Sami replies helplessly, as Cro’s extremely angelic voice blares from the speakers. “Figured I’d, uh, surprise you.”

“Oh wow,” Mesut says and wheezes. “Surprise alright.” He doesn’t let go of Sami, instead he buries his head in the crook of Sami’s neck, somewhere in the space under the boombox. His hair brushes over the side of Sami’s face, and Sami enjoys the moment as long as he can.

“My arms are getting heavy,” Sami points out, which causes Mesut to laugh again, but he also lets Sami hand over the boombox and puts it on the ground.

Before Sami can say thanks, Mesut asks, “So for real, what is this about?”

“Just a surprise,” Sami repeats, at a loss for what to say. In an ideal scenario he wouldn’t have had to explain, he’d be making out with Mesut at this point. What happened in the scene after the guy held up the boombox? Sami never watched that movie.

Mesut tilts his head. “Dude. The suit, the likes, the music. You trying to tell me something? And I do realise that’s a song from Cro,” he says and points his thumb in the direction of the speakers.

“Well, do you like it?”

“Am I supposed to?”

“Yes,” Sami says firmly.

“I do.”

Mesut looks expectantly at Sami, and Sami knows it’s probably his turn to say something, to clear everything up, but he suddenly feels very vulnerable out here in Mesut’s front yard, when Mesut is evidently not an extremely huge fan of the stunts Sami has pulled. He’s almost missing Cro and his stupid advice.

“Okay,” Sami says in the end and rubs a heavy hand across his face. ‘Okay’? Okay, that’s cool? Okay, I’m in love with you?

“Sami?” Mesut asks in a tone of voice that instantly makes Sami look up again.

“Yeah?”

“Balboa is drooling on your shoe.”

“Oh,” Sami says, disappointed.

“It’s how he shows affection, though.”

Sami looks down into Balboa’s pleading wet eyes. ‘You and me both,’ he thinks, and picks the pug up to carry it into Mesut’s house.

 

**5**

When Cro shows up in front of Sami’s door in without notice, Sami considers lying down on the floor and pretending he’s not home, but in the end he doesn’t pull through.

Cro shrugs apologetically as Sami lets him in, but he doesn’t seem to _actually_ feel an inch of shame.

“What are you doing here?” Sami ask as he follows Cro who walks straight towards the kitchen without as much as taking his shoes off.

“I’m pleased to see you, too, Sami,” Cro says with a grin and starts going through the contents of Sami’s fridge like he’s at home here.

“Seriously, why are you here? You could have, like, dropped a message or something.”

“Eh, my job includes traveling, you know. I was close.”

“Job,” Sami says, doing air quotes, “You don’t have a show in _Italy_. Nobody even knows you here.”

“Ouch. But, yeah, whatever, I’m here on holiday,” Cro admits.

“And you seriously walked the streets here with your mask on?”

“I learned that the Italian word for panda is also panda,” Cro replies gleefully. He picks a smoothie bottle from Sami’s fridge and studies the ingredient list before downing half of it in one go. “So what’s up with Mesut?”

Sami nudges the fridge door closed and sighs. “Nothing much. He’s playing well. Arsenal is second in the table.”

“Arsenal, second, table, all I’m hearing is blah blah football. Did you fuck or nah?”

“What? We-- no. No. He didn’t even like your stupid social media idea or the boombox thing or any of your ideas, really.”

“He likes your haircut!”

“Yeah.” Sami huffs and pushes some strands of hair out of his face. “I think that’s about enough for a wedding. Listen, your plan was nice, and you tried hard, but I think it’s time to stop.”

“Oh, come on! It was fun!”

“Yeah, it _was_. Remind me again, why did I do all that stuff you told me to do?”

“Because you want me to keep coming to your charity matches?” Cro shrugs. “I think it was something like that. Either that or my incredible charm.”

“Maybe Mesut just… doesn’t care like that. Which is okay, I guess.”

“With the way he looks at you and talks about you? No way. You know you’ll regret it forever if you never even try.”

Sami is too tired to argue against these (for Cro surprisingly sober sounding) words. He guesses it _would_ look easier than it is from the outside, if you weren’t there for Sweden and Real Madrid and Brazil. Cro always says he doesn’t care for the football part of it - but actually, it’s impossible and pointless to ignore it, because it’s a huge part of Sami and Mesut and what they are to each other.

“He’s… ugh. I’ve known him for so long, it feels like forever,” Sami says. “I can’t just… try. I think I’m going to wait until I retire to the MLS and then propose to him and if he says no, I can vanish into irrelevance on the bench of some McDonalds sponsored stadium.”

Meanwhile, Cro has finished the rest of the smoothie and puts the now empty bottle back into the fridge. “That seems like an awfully long-term plan,” he says. “I think we can do better.”

Sami just shrugs, but as always Cro has different, surprising plans.

Before Sami can even really process what’s happening, Cro grabs him with one hand and pulls him forward into a kiss that squishes his panda mask between them. He uses the other hand to snap a photo of the situation with his phone at incredible speed.

Just as quickly, he lets go of Sami again and types away on the phone. A phone that seems too familiar.

“Dude, what the fuck was that?” Sami says, disoriented, and wipes the back of his hand over his mouth a couple of time. “Ew. And that’s-- how do you have my phone! Give it back! What the fuck.”

Sami expects to have to fight Cro for his phone, but Cro hands it back easily with a shit-eating grin when Sami reaches for it.

“Thank me later,” Cro says and leans back against the kitchen counter.

It’s easy to figure out what he did, because the messenger window is still open. Cro sent a message consisting of three red hearts and a blushing-smiling emoji to Mesut and then the photo, a little blurred but undeniably Cro kissing Sami, with a bit of his tongue visible.

“I have a feeling Mesut will care,” Cro says, and mostly Sami wants to hit him hard.

“You really couldn’t have come up with anything more incredibly stupid, could you?” Sami asks, while trying to figure out how to delete the messages and whether he can at all. “Or did you just want to kiss me?”

Cro coyly adjusts his mask, licks his lips and bats his eyelashes through the holes in the plastic, but ultimately leaves the question uncommented.

“Look, the plan is foolproof,” he starts instead, but it’s obvious that even he himself can’t take all of this half-serious anymore. “I’ve watched about two and a half romcoms on my way here and the thing to do is obviously - can’t believe I didn’t think of this before - play hard to get.”

“Play hard to get?” Sami asks, his voice perhaps a pitch too high and a nuance too hysterical. “If that worked, Mesut would be in my bed as we speak. And then you and me wouldn’t be speaking.”

“Eh. More like, make him jealous.”

Sami doesn’t reply to that, because during his fruitless efforts to delete the photo, Mesut has seen the photo. He hasn’t replied, so Sami sees his chance to clear this up.

_sorry, cro sent this_

A bubble pops up and vanishes again, indicating Mesut trying to type something. It takes awkwardly long, and Sami realises there are some other pieces Mesut is also missing.

 _and he took it_ , Sami writes. _and it’s not what it looks like, just a stupid joke_

The reply is short, _like the boombox._

Mesut definitely knows that something has been going now, and Sami regrets that this silly thing he let Cro do turned into something he needs to explain.

 _you know how he is,_ Sami tries.

Mesut instantly answers _you don’t need my permission haha._ and then goes offline.

Sami is more than a little suspicious about the period after the _haha_ , it sounds awfully flat coming from Mesut. But any more arguing for his case would just make Sami look even more guilty of whatever. So he leaves it at that and locks his phone, only to find Cro curiously looking over his shoulder

“He’s jealous,” Cro says with a sugary sweet voice and more than just a little missplaced self-adulation.

“Cro?” Sami asks.

“Yeah?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Oh, come on! I’ve never done anything wrong ever,” Cro says and casually turns back to the fridge to pull out a joghurt. Sami’s gonna have to check the inventory after this.

“No. Stop. I let you do this, it was fun, maybe. Sometimes. But it’s over now, okay? No stunts, no stealing my phone. Okay?”

“Okay,” Cro says, “but Mesut--”

“No but!”

“ _Yes but!_ I’ll stop but you have to talk to Mesut! I can’t hang out with you anymore if I constantly have to see your pining face. There!”

“Is that supposed to be an ultimatum?”

“Whatever,” Cro sneers and adjusts the Supreme cap under his mask. “Where’s your playstation?”

“It’s in the--” Sami starts, taken by surprise by the sudden chance of topic. “Wait. One question. How did you unlock my phone?”

“Please,” Cro says and rolls his eyes. “One five one zero? Try harder. A lot.”

 

**+1**

Sami invites Mesut for dinner in what could be considered a sudden surge of panic.

He finally wants to do something to try and tell Mesut about how he feels, something that’s not dictated by somebody who eats weed for breakfast, but if that honestly was the one and only reason, he’d have done it with a little more preparation.

What really happens, is that Mesut had obviously been suspicious ever since the stupid photo thing, and one day all too casually he asks Sami for Cro’s number.

Sami is not ready for _that_ particular disaster to happen, especially now that he knows that Mesut knows that Cro has been involved in some sort of plan.

So yes, Sami panics, ignores the request and invites Mesut to dinner on a Tuesday night, with about a dozen hasty typos.

Mesut agrees. Immediately. Which shocks Sami again, so much that he drives to the next supermarket and buys ten packages of candles, returns home, realises you can’t eat candles, drives back and buys food for them.

He really hopes that it means something that Mesut wants to come. Mesut is not in team training at the moment because of knee problems, but he does have individual training and the trip from London to Turin is not the shortest.

Mesut looks only a tiny bit tired when he walks out of the airport hall towards Sami and his car, eyes hidden under dark sunglasses, but with a big smile.

“Hey,” Sami says.

“Hey,” Mesut replies, takes off his sunglasses, and Sami is stunned for a second by the flare-up of his own feelings.

“Uh, how-- how’s your knee?”

“Not made for flights without extra leg room.” Mesut turns his hand in a so-so motion. “Physio taped it up as well as he could and it doesn’t really hurt. It’s fine, really.”

Sami can’t hold back any longer then and embraces Mesut in a hug, warm and familiar, Mesut’s hand slowly coming to rest on Sami’s lower back.

“I’m glad you could come.”

“A little spontaneous, but of course. With this knee I’m not gonna get called up for the internationals so I don’t know when we would have seen each other next,” Mesut replies with a laugh and moves away from Sami to give him a once-over. It’s a look that’s not judging exactly, but mustering, so that Sami almost expects Mesut to start questioning him about the Cro ordeal.

But he doesn’t, he just gets into the car through the door that Sami holds open and shoves his bag onto the backseat.

“What are you waiting for, old man?” Mesut asks, and Sami flips him off, before getting in and starting the car.

Sami turns the radio on during the drive to his house, and with the warm air breezing through the open car window and the landscape sliding past them, Sami feels like he could drive on forever. He looks over to Mesut in the passenger seat sometimes, always in the second when Mesut just looks away.

They eat dinner together, spaghetti after a recipe that Sami scraped out of the depth of the Juve team chat (Sami curses himself that maybe _that_ many candles was, after all, _too_ many candles), and talk about lots of trivial stuff.

But Sami has the feeling that Mesut is throwing the same looks that Sami is as well, something on the tip of his tongue, but also expecting him to speak up first.

In the end, as usual, it’s Mesut who is more sensible and finally changes topic, as they stand together on Sami’s balcony with after-dinner drinks.

“So what’s Cro up to?” Mesut asks casually, while staring into his glass of apple juice.

Cro, surprisingly, is in Germany planning with the DFB. Sami doesn’t know how the fuck Cro got booked for the Euro jersey presentation, and perhaps he doesn’t even want the details.

“I don’t really want to talk about Cro,” Sami says.

“Oh? Haven’t you been hanging out?”

“No,” Sami says quickly. “I mean, yeah, I was at his party in Stuttgart some time ago, but it wasn’t, like, something special.”

Mesut tilts his head, squint accompanied by a suspicious quirk of his mouth.

“Okay, but there was that photo you sent me, and you played his song in my front yard. That made me curious.”

“I guess he’s been around?” It sounds like a question, at which Mesut hums softly and Sami cringes inwardly.

“The likes on instagram, that was his idea, too, probably?”

“Stupid enough that it could only have been his idea.”

“The random need for a suit?”

“I-- yeah. And the,” Sami clears his throat and leans on the railing of the balcony, hanging his hands over it. “The haircut.”

“He did really make you do all of that? I’m sorry, but this is hilarious. Even though the haircut does really suit you.” Mesut grins and bares his teeth. “But, why?”

Sami presses his lips shut.

“Come on, Sami,” Mesut says. He gently nudges Sami’s arm. “I know there’s something going on, I’m not stupid. Is it about the jersey presentation? I don’t-- I can’t really add it up. Why am I here? Why are we talking about _Cro_?”

Sami shrugs. “Because… I invited you, and you said yes?”

“I’d always say yes, as long as I can. I’m out with the injury, so I had time. You wanna tell me why you’re being weird?” Mesut waves his hand is a fluttering motion at the last word.

“And Wenger isn’t forcing you into the gym anyway?”

“You’re evading my question. But no,” Mesut says. “I told him where I wanted to go, and he let me go. He said he liked a good love story as much as the next guy.”

Sami’s arm slips off the railing and he dumps the contents of his glass down the balcony in his garden.

“What,” he stutters.

Mesut slowly takes the glass out of Sami’s hand and put it away on the nearby table along with his own one. Sami watches him wide-eyed.

“Wanna tell me why you’re being weird?” Mesut repeats and reaches over just so far that his fingertips are touching Sami’s hand.

Sami realises he started this day with a number of wrong assumptions, but that smart thought isn’t helping him form any sentences right now.

“It was a stupid plan,” Sami says helplessly.

“If you say ‘Cro made me do it’ one more time,” Mesut says and furrows his brows.

“It’s not... about Cro, is it?”

“Oh, really?” Mesut asks, and his slightly shaking voice and fingers are the only hint that he’s not as sure as he acts. He doesn’t get angry as much as he gets stubborn. “I’m trying to have a grown-up conversation without any damn pandas with you. You sent me a photo, without any comment, of you swapping spit with Cro, which, like, okay, it’s your business! It’s fine! And then I’m thinking back to the boombox and instagram and I realise it’s just you finally getting the clue that I’ve been sitting on for, oh, only a couple of _years_ and--”

“I love you,” Sami says, turns his hand up so Mesut’s hand effortlessly slips into it, and suddenly it seems like easiest thing in the world - just telling the truth. Like it’s something that Mesut simply deserves to know, because it’s, without doubt, a love story.

“Oh, fuck you,” Mesut says, which is not exactly the reaction Sami expected after this build-up, like, at all. “Now you can say it?”

“I’m sorry,” Sami says and shrugs. “I love you.”

Mesut uses his free hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, but he doesn’t withdraw his hand, and Sami can see that a sheepish smile is growing on his face, so that probably makes it okay. Mesut starts laughing then, under the hand that’s still over his face, and he steps closer to Sami with shaking shoulders.

“I listened to Cro for you,” he says, mockingly appalled, and looks up at Sami. “I love you, too.”

They both move in closer at the same time, and they both hesitate at the same time, before Mesut cups Sami’s cheek and kisses him.

Sami closes his eyes, and it’s all about Mesut’s hand still in his now, Mesut’s chest brushing his chest with every breath, Mesut’s lips moving gently, but decidedly. It's like the things that Sami has thought about, but could never imagine this vividly in his wildest dreams.

Without stopping the kiss, Mesut pushes him back and turns them a little, and Sami follows his lead blindly, so he ends up with his back against the iron framing of the balcony.

Sami lifts his free hand to Mesut’s jaw, strokes his thumb over the soft stubble and keeps it there once Mesut breaks away.

Mesut’s mouth is red, his eyes are dark in the sun shining on the balcony, and Sami is sure he’s never seen anyone more handsome in his life.

Just like in the car when they came here, Sami feels like he can just keep going forever. And, thinking about it, they already have quite a piece of forever behind them with all the time they’ve known each other.

Mesut squeezes Sami’s hand in his.

“Cro will be the very last to hear about this. Just to annoy him,” Mesut says empathically. Then he smiles and lifts his hand to brush a couple of Sami’s strands of hair away. “Although I guess he deserves credit for the hair.”

Sami laughs, and he pulls Mesut in for another kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> In case you couldn't tell, this became a lot longer than initially planned. Thanks for reading!  
> Leave a comment or hit me up on [twitter](https://twitter.com/kissthecrest) or [tumblr](http://lahmly.tumblr.com/) to chat, if you want to.
> 
> \- trash soundtrack: [one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huBNgxolXFo), [two](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkHzvhzwDGM), [three](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WQMBv2deYQ)  
> \- the title is from the song '[Kein Benz](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJQ794po6wM)' - _I know the road is still long but until I’ve made it / I say screw Benz and keep taking my fold-up bike_  
>  \- [Cro at Sami’s charity match](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CHzk2KmWgAAVgXg.jpg)  
> \- [Sami at Cro’s MTV Unplugged event (time stamp)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huBNgxolXFo&t=1m27s)  
> \- [clip for promotion of the euro’16 jersey in which Cro gets a call from Mesut](https://www.facebook.com/cromusic/videos/1088166107884440/)  
> \- [photo of the jersey presentation](https://www.tz.de/bilder/2015/11/09/5832713/1450436482-dfb-emre-can-lukas-podolski-jonas-hector-dy77w0wuea7.jpg)  
> \- [awesome art from fabi](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRGR4b5WAAE1AQg.jpg)
> 
> Merry christmas and/or happy holidays!


End file.
